Joan-Pau Rubifis I Mirabet

VIJAYAKAGARA IN FOREIGN EYE A Study of Travel Literature and Ethnology in the Renaissance (1420-1600) Joan-PaU Rubifis i Mirabet (King's College) Submitted as partial requirement for a PhD degree at the University of Cambridge (1991) VIJAYANAGARA IN FOREIGN EYES A study of Travel Literature and Ethnology in the Renaissance (1420-1600) Joan Pau Rubi6s i Mirabet This dissertation attempts to understand the formation and transmission of images of non-European societies during the Renaissance from a case-study. An introductory chapter explains travel literature as a genre, and establishes its general importance for the early development of the human sciences in the European cultural tradition, in particular the empirical assumption that dominates the production of practically-oriented narratives based on the creative use of everyday language. The argument then goes on to focus on various descriptions of the South Indian kingdom of Vijayanagara written in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by foreign observers. This body of literature is studied thoroughly and in chronological order, with reference to the education and interests of the travellers and to the quality-of. their Indian experiences. Thus. the argument compares medieval with sixteenth-century travel narratives, and texts produced within a Muslim and a Latin Christian traditions. Finally, it attempts to evaluate the use travellers made of their rhetorical possibilities from indigenous a modern understanding of the complexity of the cultural tradition and political system. Continuous reference to the travel literature of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance connects this original case-study with the contemporary process of formation of ethnological languages in Europe. The conclusion argues for the understanding of travel literature as a possible form of cultural translation. It also defines the fundamental assumptions of Renaissance ethnology as the understanding of human diversity in natural and historical terms, albeit in the limited form of descriptions of social behaviour which avoided the open discussion of religious beliefs. DECLARATION This dissertation is the result of my own work and not the outcome of work done in collaboration. It does not exceed 80.000 words in length, excluding footnotes, references and bibliography. ii CONTENTS PREFACE iv Introduction: Travel Writing as a Genre P. 1 The Empire of Vijayanagara in Foreign Eyes p. 26 1. Foreign authors and genres on Vijayanagara p. 36 2. A medieval interpretation of South India: the merchant and the humanist p. 43 3. Vijayanagara from a Muslim tradition p. 79 4. Ludovico di Varthema: the curious traveller at the time of Vasco de Gama and Columbus p. 133 5. The Portuguese and Vijayanagara: politics, religion and classification p. 163 6. The practice of ethnography: Indian customs and castes p. 182 7. The social and political order: Vijayanagara decoded p. 209 8. The historical dimension: From native traditions to European orientalism p. 230 9. Conclusion p. 257 BIBLIOGRAPHY 273 iii PREFACE In this piece of historical research I have attempted to uncover the different dimensions of a complex cultural process, the formation and transmission of images of foreign peoples in Renaissance Europe from the beginning of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth century, broadly speaking. I have sought to relate a set of genres, travel literature, to the evolution of ethnological thought. Since the material is indeed vast, I have not attempted to analyze all the sources equally. Rather, by choosing one set of related texts, which I have tried then to interpret in the particular context of its production and circulation, my aim has been to elaborate a detailed case-study from which to suggest a wider narrative. Although this case-study focuses quite sharply on early European descriptions of the kingdom of Vijayanagara in South India, the validity of my generalizations is tested by a continuous reference to other texts which are peripheral to my analysis. Taken together, these references constitute the matrix for a more comprehensive cultural map which I have sought to define in an introductory chapter, dealing with travel literature as genre. My intention is to offer two kinds of conclusions. First, at the end of the case-study focused on Vijayanagara I shall attempt to explain the relevance of travel literature for our understanding of the European iv Renaissance. In this sense I expect my thesis to illuminate the new importance of some fundamental assumptions developed through the practice of describing a society placed almost entirely outside the European tradition, and more particularly to evaluate the quality of these descriptions, whose complexity far surpasses the self- interested imposition of European prejudices which has recently become known as "orientalism". Secondly, and throughout my historical narrative, I hope to have elaborated a model for interpreting cultural history which addresses some difficult problems about continuity and change in a tradition, and the relationship between subjective interpretation and human agency as a whole. In the following pages I shall explain with more detail these two claims. * Although it is of ten recognised that the cultural changes of the Renaissance must have contributed to the rise of the empirical sciences in the following centuries, this link has scarcely ever been made clear, especially insofar as it concerns the human sciences. In part this is because significant genres, such as travel literature, have not been discussed in the context of an intellectual history which is too exclusively concerned with the more elite genres of the humanist and scholastic traditions. Thus some of the roots of early modern natural and human V history have been taken for granted. ' Another reason may also be that travel literature has not been sufficiently studied with this question in mind. This does not mean that I have been unable to profit f rom previous studies. The tradition of travel collections inaugurated by Ramusio in the sixteenth century has been continuous in Europe since then, and there have been in the past two centuries scholarly editions of many travel narratives relevant to this study. In the English-speaking world, the various volumes published by the Hakluyt Society have been particularly invaluable. There has not been, however, any detailed and systematic attempt to assess the importance of this kind of literature in the development of the human sciences. In this cultural area a crucial development, both qualitative and quantitative, takes place since the late Middle Ages and in particular in the key moment of the great geographical discoveries of the Renaissance, with the subsequent expansion of cosmographical genres. Special studies of single narratives, such as those of Marco Polo or Columbus, however sensitive to special problems of interpretation, cannot be expected to have mapped satisfactorily a long- term process that, in several decades, led to the crucial discussion of the relationship between human behaviour and 1 It has also been typical of the literature to assume that things start much later, and thus to neglect completely the Renaissance. such is the case of Hazard 1935, who begins the analysis in the late seventeenth century, or more Said 1978, to the literature before acutely in the work of whose references fail the late eighteenth century to constitute a proper reconstruction of a European tradition of thought about the East. vi human beliefs from the perspective of an empirical definition of diversity of laws and customs. Similarly, the cultural chapters often attached to general histories of the Expansion of Europe constitute little more than a 2 starting point. Even though they may offer some insight, they can hardly deal with the complex interaction between this kind of literature and wider cultural processes. Equally limited are studies devoted to the geographical literature of a single country, such as France, Portugal, or Italy. 3 Finally, some studies of travel literature have been undertaken from the perspective of literary criticism, which has made them particularly vulnerable to a tendency to simplify the historical context - social, political, or 4 even cultural - for the sake of rhetorical analysis. I think that this study can contribute to a clarification of the more general questions, by introducing a full discussion of the theme from the perspective of a theoretically-sensitive and empirically-informed cultural history. I am fully aware that any answer offered in this work can only be partial. Firstly, because genres beyond travel literature such as historiography or moral philosophy are 2 For instance Fernfindez Armesto 1987, Lafaye 1984, Parry 1981, Phillips 1988, Scammell 1981. 3 See respectively Atkinson 1935, Silva Dias 1973 and Zoli 1982. ttiemble, in his recent work on the European interpretation of China, is right to emphasize the importance of a "pre-philosophical" thought in travel literature, which is at the root of Montesquieuls Esprit des Lois. However, the perspective is because completely deformed the author intends to explain "China as seen by Europe" while, in fact, he basically writes about "China as seen in the French cultural space" (ttiemble 1988, especially pp. 213-27). 4 For instance Campbell 1988. vii relevant to the development of the human sciences in early 5 modern Europe. Secondly, because the number of sources available has meant that I have had to focus my analysis on a few

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